Category: Daily Life

For some reason, my husband and I were both up by 7:00 a.m. yesterday, so I made bacon, scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast. We tried to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, but lost interest due to the vast imbalance between anchor blah-blah-blah and actual views of the floats.

Because our Thanksgiving dinner was really at dinnertime, we had a much smaller feast at midday:

For the big dinner, I made cranberry sauce and pomegranate salsa. I made some modifications to the cranberry sauce recipe based on a recipe at Kitchen Craft. I liked the idea of having some spices in the sauce, so I added 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves and 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger to my regular recipe. It was quite tasty! I’ll have to add those ingredients as options on my recipe post.

Besides the well-received pomegranate salsa, the other appetizers were assorted olives, boiled peanuts, and fresh mozzarella marinated with sun-dried tomatoes, herbs and olive oil. The dinner consisted of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, mashed sweet potatoes, my cranberry sauce, green beans sauteed in butter with shallots and red pepper strips, ambrosia fruit salad, and French bread. We had pumpkin pie for dessert. I ate some of everything.

Today I’m planning on making turkey pot pie with some of the leftovers (keeping enough turkey aside for turkey sandwiches, of course). I don’t know what to do with the leftover sweet potatoes. Any ideas?

Enjoy other surreal Thanksgiving LOLs at LOLgrims.com.

It was a gorgeous day. We walked 7.8 miles and I learned that I am in terrible, terrible shape. Fortunately, my fancy new shoes protected my feet, but my knees and hips hurt a lot.

I finally had to quit taking pictures because the walk pace was already brutal and I got behind every time I stopped for a moment. You can see my whole set on Flickr.

Off the top of my head, here are some products with which I’ve been interacting this week that deserve special mention.

• Baytril antibiotic tablets. Just the thing when all three of your cats have raging upper respiratory infections. I cannot tell you how much fun it is to jam one of them down each cat’s throat every morning. The good news is that they seem to work. Only Xena, whose onset of symptoms was well behind everyone else’s, is still suffering from violent sneezing fits, weepy eyes and a pathetic cough. I think she’ll be back to normal in a couple more days.
• Fresh Sugar Lemon lotion. Oh how I love that stuff! I’m still working on my sample-sized bottle from the Roosevelt Hotel in L.A., but I will definitely buy some when I run out. No other lotion I’ve tried smells that good for that long yet doesn’t irritate my super-dry skin.
• Kerrygold Irish Cheddar Cheese. Whole Foods has gotten its claws into me, as evidenced by my purchase of this delicious cheese. The price deterred me on the trip where I first tasted it, but given a little extra money on my return visit, I couldn’t resist. Now I know why Monkey refers to Whole Foods as "Whole Paycheck."

On a sad note, our betta fish, Mr. Fishy, died yesterday. We’d had him since 2004, which is a crazy long time for one of them to live. His brief memorial service was held in our bathroom, presided over by my husband and attended by Velcro and Xena, both of whom enjoy watching the toilet flush under any circumstances.

I’m skipping the reminiscence post for now and writing instead about the fun evening I had last night. The hubby and I went to the very first stop on the FOUND vs. POSTSECRET Tour.

I had an inkling that the event would be a trifle disorganized because the online ticket sales never materialized and there was a bit of confusion about the time the show started. I was right, but that didn’t detract from the entertainment value of the presentation.

Frank Warren of PostSecret was the first presenter. He showed a bunch of "secret secrets" that had been left out of the books for various reasons, and explained how the site got started.

Davy Rothbart followed with animated readings of various Found Magazine pieces. He then turned the mic over to his brother, Peter, who performed three songs based on found items, including my favorite, "The Booty Don’t Stop":

It’s even funnier with the context of the story that introduces it.

In between performances, audience members divided into teams and competed in various silly events to determine how the admission fees would be divided between two different charities.

The FOUND vs. POSTSECRET Tour has 12 more stops in various cities throughout the U.S., beginning with St. Louis tonight. If they’re coming through your town, I highly recommend that you go.

I spend an insane amount of time sitting on this couch with the laptop on my lap. The wire sculpture above the couch is a carousel horse that I bought at a garage sale. It’s one of those things that my guests either like immediately or hate so much that they start making suggestions about what else I might be able to hang there.

The coffee table is a Syrian copper tray on a stand that once belonged to my grandparents. Family lore has it that my grandmother would clean out the engraved design with a toothpick while she waited for her teenagers to come back from their dates. It doesn’t get that thoroughly worked over anymore. 

Here’s a closer look at the objets d’art on the shelves over the fireplace, back when they were a little less messy:

At the top left, you’ll see a jaguar eating a human heart. On your top right, a beautiful vase depicting an elephant being attacked by a tiger. So now you know everything you need to know about my taste in home decor in case you’d ever like to get me a present.

As much as my NaBloPoMo schedule has made posting easier every day, it’s also making me feel as though I’m missing out on talking about my usual everyday stuff. Things keep happening, but I can’t talk about them ’cause I said I was posting a recipe or a product review or a meme. I’m a prisoner in my own blog!

Since I gave myself a free day on Friday, let me spew forth all of the endlessly fascinating stuff I’ve been holding back all week. Yes, that is sarcasm.

Monday started with a bang, or to be more specific, a blowout. About a block from work, one of my back tires blew out. I went ahead and parked in the garage, went to my desk and opted to deal with it later. For some reason, I thought I didn’t have a spare tire, but I actually did. In the early afternoon, I put on the spare and made an appointment with the car dealer to get a new tire. It took me an hour to get from work to the dealer because I had to avoid the highway (the spare said 50mph maximum).
Fortunately, only the tire was ruined and not the wheel itself.

On Tuesday morning, I took Velvet and Velcro to the vet because both of them had been sneezing for several days. Diagnosis: upper respiratory infection, with the added bonus of an ear infection for Velvet. They each get an antibiotic pill every morning for 10 days and Velvet gets ear drops. By the time I got them home, they’d lost all trust in me and it was a trial to get the pills down them. Velvet fought me on the ear drops with such vigor that I saved them for the evening. I think that’ll be the routine until we’re done.

In my continuing quest for greenness, I looked up the location of the local household hazardous waste disposal drop-off site. It turned out to be about a half a mile from my house. I made an appointment for Wednesday morning and loaded up my car with four burned-out CFLs (Xena had thoughtfully dashed one of them to the floor, so I bagged up the pieces and brought them), two car batteries, an old tire, and a mishmash of mostly-empty paint cans. They took it all and now my garage and basement are much less cluttered.

For Thursday evening, I’d organized a happy hour for former employees of my favorite dotcom job from the late ’90s. The turnout was rather low (4 people out of the 20-ish employees), but we had a nice time catching up.

Today I’ll be heading to work in the morning but leaving to speak on an Ad Club Career Day panel about copywriting and concepting. I made a four-slide PowerPoint with a few of my work samples, including a cool blog I once did and a couple of games for which I wrote copy. The final slide is a look at some of the unglamorous but strategically important writing I do: meta data, keywords and text-based search ads. It’s good to give the college kids a little dose of reality, I think.

So that’s my exciting week. Aren’t you glad you’re caught up on all of the gripping details? Back tomorrow with more NaBloPoMo thrills.

By the way, don’t forget to leave a comment on yesterday’s post to enter yourself in a giveaway for a $100 prize pack of jewelry and artwork. You have until the end of the day today.

Via a post on Lip-Sticking, I learned about a women-friendly California winery called Mirassou. Check out this contest they’re having for women entrepreneurs:

Since obtaining capital is the No. 1 obstacle
women face in starting their own businesses, Mirassou has created the
"Make Your Dreams Come True with Mirassou" contest which provides
$50,000 in seed money to help start a "Dream" business.

How cool is that? On the strength of that information alone, I made a point of picking up a bottle of Mirassou the last time I went wine shopping. It’s very reasonably priced (about $10 a bottle), and I’m enjoying the Merlot I bought and eager to try some of the other vintages they offer.

* * * * * *
IT’S ANOTHER GIVEAWAY!

I had so much fun with my last giveaway that I jumped at the chance to do it again. This time I have two gift collections from Charming Sam, courtesy of Wickedly Chic and Marmalade Pink. Each one contains a necklace, a pair of earrings, some mini art prints, and a collection of collage sheets, total value $100.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post between now and the end of the day on Friday. Don’t disqualify yourself because you’re outside of the U.S. – I’m happy to ship the prizes anywhere. Guys: don’t rule yourselves out either; remember, it’s almost holiday shopping time.

To choose the winners, I’ll number the commenters in the order in which they posted and have a random number generator select two numbers from the range.

On Wednesday morning, I logged into my bank account just to have a look before my paycheck went in. Imagine my dismay when I saw a debit of about $48 at a Shell gas station in San Bernardino, California. It immediately caught my eye not only because it had cost me TWO $25 "courtesy pay" charges (one of which was applied to a debit that would have been covered by my balance if not for the fraudulent charge), but because anytime I do buy gas at Shell, I use my Shell credit card. Then, of course, there was the fact that I haven’t been to San Bernardino.

I called my credit union the instant they opened and had them cancel my debit card. All I needed was to have the accursed thief steal a big chunk of my paycheck once it went into my account.

Then I had to go to the credit union and fill out paperwork disputing the transaction. It was all very familiar because the same thing happened to me back in March.

I don’t know what it’ll take to keep my debit card number out of the hands of thieves. Stop buying online? Stop using it altogether? I don’t have a credit card, so it’s pretty much my only option for most transactions. Maybe I’ll just have to go back to carrying cash and hope I don’t get mugged.

On top of that drama, I’ve been sick for two days. Things can only get better from here…right?

Update: The credit union credited back the amount of the fraudulent charge and one of the $25 fees. I did some research and found a credit card that offers one-time "virtual numbers" for use in online transactions. I applied for it and was approved, so now I’ll have it available for future web purchases and travel. I guess the lesson here is that you can’t be too careful.

Maybe it’s only temporary, but I find that I’m just not on board with the whole idea of doing Halloween stuff this year. I’ve already had three opportunities to dress up, but I’ve foregone it each time.

I could have worn a costume for the blogger party on Friday night, but I was going straight from work so it seemed like too much trouble. I was invited to a Halloween party on Saturday, but it started about the time I was ready to go to bed, so I passed on that. It was even suggested that we dress up for the spay/neuter clinic, but I was glad I didn’t do so because only one guy ended up there in costume.

Of course, last weekend was just the first wave. Now there’s a costume contest and pumpkin carving contest at work on Wednesday, not to mention the trick-or-treaters that evening. Sigh.

Maybe it’s partly because I have blue-highlighted hair now and thus have a sort of costume going on all the time, but I just don’t feel like spending hours wearing something odd, uncomfortable and probably cold. I’m still getting used to noticing strangers staring at me and remembering that I’m a part of the Weirdo-American community in the eyes of the general public.

At this point, I’m not going to put out decorations, I’m not getting a pumpkin, I’m not dressing up, and I may very well shut off the porch light on Wednesday night and pretend I’m not home. On a positive note, I’ll be able to avoid a lot of candy calories…at least until I get to work on Thursday.

Am I being a Halloween scrooge or does the fun just run out eventually for everyone? What do you think?